Top 10 for 2010

For most companies 2009 was a difficult year, so with cuts in both budgets and resources many companies anticipate to increase the use of email marketing in their customer communication programmes.

Guy Hanson, member of the DMA Email Council, shares his top 10 thoughts on email marketing for 2010. Over the coming months Guy will expand on each topic to share some more of his expertise - ensure you receive the latest news and tips by registering below.

1. Increased Activity
Like death and taxes, increased email activity in 2010 is a certainty. The recent economic downturn has driven marketers to seek our more cost-effective methods of communicating with their customers and prospects, and e-marketing has fitted the bill perfectly. Ironically, this has placed downward pressure on cost of delivery, making e-marketing even more affordable, and creating even more volume as a result.

2. Social Media: Increased Volume
Another, less anticipated, source of increased email volume is from the rise in prominence of the various social media applications such as Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter. Email is already widely regarded as the “digital glue” that connects key lines of communication within new media & social marketing. Just about every social media transaction is generating a notification email, and these are all ending up in the inbox too!

3. The Increasing Battle for Eyeshare
The immediate and obvious consequence of these first 2 points is greater competition for eyeshare in the inbox. This means that email marketers will need to become correspondingly more focused on generating the levels of recognition that will persuade the recipients to open their emails. This places a premium on making sure that the “friendly from” and the subject line both clearly reflect who the email is coming from. It also means that e-marketers should consider using techniques such as graphical personalization to boost open rates. In a recent DBGi case study for Wiltshire farm Foods, open rates for the graphically personalized version exceeded those for the non-personalised version by 30%.

4. Greater Relevance
According to a recent Forrester report, almost 50% of e-marketers are now attempting to make their email communications more relevant. As a consequence, there is going to be a heightened need for data integration, plus increased adoption of tactics such as dynamic content and test & learn programs, as well as provision of the corresponding strategic and tactical services - all requirements that play well to a combined MSP/ESP such as Database Group.

5. Engagement
This may be a relatively new e-marketing metric, but it is the one that all e-marketers should be paying attention to. Building on the previous two points, engagement goes further than simply measuring opens, clicks and conversions - rather, it’s a question of building up an understanding of the relationship between these metrics. The better the ratio between open rates and click through rates, the higher the level of engagement. A detailed understanding of the dynamics that drive complaint data will also strongly influences inbox placement. Marketers who focus on statistics rather than relevancy will struggle, because each ISP interprets ( and actions ) this information in a different way.

6. Managed Service Provision
Interestingly, there appears to be a clear shift back to e-marketers using Email Service Providers ( ESPs ) as either a fully managed or collaborative broadcasting proposition, with around 45% of US e-marketers now taking this approach. Some of the reasons for this shift are already well-known : leveraging the most up to date technology, access to industry expertise, and reduced operational costs. However, the recent economic downturn has introduced a new factor - while around 1 in 5 marketing departments have had to trim their teams, there has been a corresponding leveraging of ESPs production services to offset this down-sizing - the so-called “fractional manager” approach.

7. Program Automation
In order to increase both campaign effectiveness and efficiency, marketers need the ability to easily automate programs by using triggers. Recent client surveys have highlighted a desire for more repeatable integrations and custom programs from their vendors. In this way, entire CRM programs can be defined up-front, with email touchpoints being broadcast at appropriate stages of the customer journey.

8. Web Behaviour Integration
Aligned with the above point is the fact that e-marketers will increasingly be making greater use of the ability to record the behavior of their website visitors, and to convert those observations into actionable insights. The resulting data flags can then be used to generate emails that complement / manage order confirmations, shopping basket fallout, order lag time, and one-hit wonders.

9. Social Media Integration
Social media represents a fantastic way to drive new people to a website or landing page on the premise of an offer / incentive to sign up for email. It also represents an excellent way for recipients to virally share offers (vouchers etc) and drive affiliate revenue. The online marketing space has evolved, and social media and mobile channels present the opportunity for more personal engagement to exist between people and brands. Marketers need to think beyond a batch-and-blast email marketing mentality to a well choreographed and integrated approach that is in sync with target audiences. Social media ( and mobile channels, for that matter ), combined with email marketing can help fuel this shift, enhance engagement, grow customer opt-in lists, and maximize audience touch points.

10. Deliverability
And finally, a classic case of “the more some things change, the more they stay the same” ! It remains a fundamental truth that if e-marketers can’t get their emails into the recipients’ inboxes they are not going to be opened, they are not going to be read, and they are not going to generate the website traffic that ultimately generates the sales that justify their campaign ROI. Here’s some thoughts on how to make sure that you are maximizing your inbox delivery rates:

Being single is best for 2010! Many big brand email dependent companies are still having their deliverability significantly undermined by other senders by being placed on a shared IP address(s) which is likely to cause reputation damage and deliverability issues. The recommendation is to work with an ESP (like DBGi) that has the resources and knowledge to give each client a unique dedicated IP address.
If you can’t beat them, join them - Spam volumes mean that we have reached a tipping point where it is faster and cheaper for the ISPs to put spam prevention on the back burner, and to cherry pick ( and reward ) the good senders instead. Look at using an authorized Return Path partner to take your email program through an accreditation process and see your INBOX deliverability rise.
Finally, understand your data - every ISP is different with varying thresholds, monitor the each domain saturation and potential blocking, adapt and then throttle for optimum success. Over 50% of email marketers are now using their click-stream data to drive their list segmentations.

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